Leadership

At Bethel, we are dedicated to a leadership style that puts God’s love first. This means that while we have a system in place to provide practical, day-to-day leadership, all voices are important and people with good ideas are encouraged and supported to pursue them.

Like most church congregations, Bethel has some paid staff, but mostly its leaders are volunteers who give of their time and talents in various ways to help make sure the various pieces of our organization function together to live out our vision and our calling to love and serve God's creation.

Rev. Carl Tuisku has recently retired after 27 years of ministry at Bethel. We are currently working with the synod to hire an Intentional Interim Pastor to help us during our time of transition and throughout the call process.

Our Servant Team is the elected governing body of the congregation. They meet monthly to manage the administrative life of Bethel. Members are the Congregational President, Vice-President, Secretary, Treasurer, and the Pastor.

Our Leadership Team is made up of the heads of our many Ministry Teams. It meets quarterly to share what individual teams are doing and to work together to focus on specific areas of growth in the life of Bethel.

Lisa Herlocker serves Bethel as its Director of Discipleship & Faith Formation. (She also fulfills many of the roles traditionally held by an Office Manger) She is embarrassed that her title is so long and likes to spend her free time reading history books in the sun, hanging out with her family, and dreaming of traveling far and wide, but being content to make annual trips to Disneyland.

Our guitarist, Corey Nitschke, has been with Bethel since 2005. When not writing new songs for worship, he enjoys time with his wife and young son. Like other staff members, he has a great appreciation for trips to Disneyland.

Audrey Gale is our talented pianist. She is a lifelong member of Bethel who majored in music at California Lutheran University. Audrey teaches music at a local elementary school. In her free time she enjoys spending time with her husband Patrick and daughter Hadley discovering the joys of parenting.